Forms of Time and of the Chronotope

in the Novel

We will give the name chronotope

(literally, time space) to the intrinsic
connectedness of temporal and spatial
relationships that are artistically
expressed in literature. This term [space-
time] is employed in mathematics, and
was introduced as part of Einsteins
Theory of Relativity. . . . What counts for
us is the fact that it expresses the
inseparability of space and time (time as
the fourth dimension of space). . . .
In the literary artistic chronotope,
spatial and temporal indicators are
fused into one carefully thought-out,
concrete whole. Time, as it were,
thickens, takes on flesh, becomes
artistically visible; likewise, space
becomes charged and responsive to the
movements of time, plot and
history. . . .
[One of the] basic types of novels
developed in ancient times. . . . was the
adventure novel of ordeal. . . .
The plots . . . are remarkably similar
to each other. . . . There is a boy and a
girl of marriageable age. . . . A sudden and
instantaneous passion flares up between
them. . . . They are confronted with
obstacles that retard and delay their
union. . . . The novel ends happily with
the lovers united in marriage. . . .
These elements, derived from
various different genres, are fused and
consolidated into a new specifically
novelistic unity, of which the
constitutive feature is adventure
novel-time . . . . the sudden flareup of
their passion . . . their successful union
in marriage. All action in the novel
unfolds between these two points. These
points the poles of plot movement
are themselves crucial events in the
heroes lives; in and of themselves they
have a biographical significance. But it is
not around these that the novel is
structured; rather, it is around that
which lies (that which takes place)
between them. But in essence nothing
need lie between them. From the very
beginning, the love between the hero
and the heroine is not subject to doubt;
this love remains absolutely unchanged
throughout the entire novel. Their
chastity is also preserved, and their
marriage at the end of the novel is
directly conjoined with their love that
same love that had been ignited at their
first meeting at the onset of the novel; it
is as if absolutely nothing had happened
between these two moments, as if the
marriage had been consummated on the
day after their meeting . . . .
If the situation were otherwise had,
for example, the initial instantaneous
passion of the heroes grown stronger as
a result of their adventures and ordeals;
had that passion been tested in action,
thereby acquiring new qualities of a
stable and tried love; had the heroes
themselves matured, come to know each
other better then we would have an
example of a much later European
novel-type, one that would not be an
adventure novel at all, and certainly not
a Greek romance. Although the poles of
the plot would have remained the same
(passion at the beginning, marriage at
the end), the events that retard the
marriage would have acquired in
themselves a certain biographical or at
least psychological significance; they
would give the appearance of being
stretch along the real time-line of the
heroes lives, and of effecting change in
both the heroes and in the events (the
key events) of their lives. But this is
precisely what is lacking in the Greek
romance; in it there is a sharp hiatus
between two moments of biographical
time, a hiatus that leaves no trace in the
life of the heroes or in their
personalities.
All the events of the novel that fill
this hiatus are a pure digression from
the normal course of life; they are
excluded from the kind of real duration
in which additions to a normal
biography are made.
This Greek romance-time does not
have even an elementary biological or
maturational duration. At the novels
onset the heroes meet each other at a
marriageable age, and at the same
marriageable age, no less fresh and
handsome, they consummate the
marriage at the novels end. Such a form
of time, in which they experience a most
improbable number of adventures, is
not measured off in the novel and does
not add up; it is simply days, nights,
hours, moments clocked in a technical
sense within the limits of each separate
adventure. This time adventure-time,
highly intensified but undifferentiated
is not registered in the slightest way in
the age of the heroes. We have here an
extratemporal hiatus between two
biological moments the arousal of
passion, and its satisfaction.
When Voltaire, in his Candide,
parodied the type of Greek adventure
novel that was popular in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
(the so-called Baroque novel), he took
into account the real time that would
have been required in such romances for
the hero to experience the customary
does of adventures and turns of fate.
With all obstacles overcome at the
novels end, his heroes (Candide and
Cunegonde) consummate the obligatory
happy marriage. But, alas, they have
already grown old, and the wondrous
Cunegonde resembles some hideous old
witch. Consummation follows upon
passion, but only when it is no longer
biologically possible.
It goes without saying that Greek
adventure-time lacks any natural,
everyday cyclicity such as might have
introduced into it a temporal order and
indices on a human scale, tying it to the
repetitive aspects of natural and human
life. No matter where one goes in the
world of the Greek romance, with all its
countries and cities, its buildings and
works of art, there are absolutely no
indications of historical time, no
identifying traces of the era. This also
explains the fact that scholarship has yet
to establish the precise chronology of
Greek romances, and until quite
recently scholarly opinion as to the
dates of origin of individual novels has
differed by as much as five or six
centuries. . . .
Greek romances are comparatively
short. In the seventeenth century, the
length of similarly constructed novels
increases by ten to fifteen times. There
are no internal limits to this increase.
For all the days, hours, minutes that are
ticked off within the separate
adventures are not united into a real
time series, they do not become the days
and hours of a human life. These hours
and days leave no trace, and therefore,
one may have as many of them as one
likes. . . .